Nigerian English: Identifying Semantic Features As Variety Markers

Abstract

In this paper, the authors examine Nigerian English in the light of its unique characteristics emanating from the mode of acquisition of the language by Nigerians, and the socio-cultural environment in which English is now used. Using Uriel Weinreich‟s theory of language contact to explicate the phenomenon of language variation, they observe that the English language in Nigeria has been cultivated and re-domesticated as well as indigenized to accommodate the culture and tradition of the people and as such, has acquired local colour and distinguished itself from the native speaker variety with features reflected at the semantic level. The paper identifies meaning narrowing, semantic extension, semantic reduplication, semantic shift, coinage of new words with new meanings, the Nigerianisation of idioms and proverbs, ambiguity resulting from omission of articles among other semantic issues as marking off the Nigerian English and posing a challenge to the notions of international intelligibility and acceptability.